I’m still making my way (in the leisurely fashion appropriate to a literary flâneur) through Lucy Sante’s The Other Paris (see this post), and I’ve gotten to a passage on the famous cours des miracles of old Paris which is so full of strange and wonderful words I have to post it here:
A cour des miracles was a cluster of houses that by some mix of tradition, common accord, and benign neglect was deemed off-limits to the law and, as lore has it, where a sort of permanent feast of misrule persisted. The name derives from the fact that miracles were a daily occurrence there—the blind could see, the hunchbacked stood straight, the clubfooted ran and danced, leprous skin became clear and unblemished—once their disguises had been put away for the night. The inhabitants were generally known as gueux or argotiers, the latter with reference to the fact that they spoke a secret language known only to them, at least as of the fifteenth century, when François Villon made use of it in his poems; its earliest vocabulary derives from the language of the Roma. The intricate social structure is illustrated by the abundance of names the gueux had for their highly specific professions: rifodés posed as families (they were usually unrelated) and begged in the streets, holding out a certificate that claimed their house had been destroyed by “fire from the sky”; hubains presented a document stating that Saint Hubert had cured them of rabies contracted by a dog bite; coquillards displayed seashells as proof that they had lately returned from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain; sabouleux were fake epileptics; piètres were fake amputees; francs-mitoux were fake lepers; capons were gambling shills; and so on. They were ruled by an elected chief called the King of Thunes, or Grand-Coësre, who carried a cat-o’-nine-tails and whose banner was a dead dog impaled on a pitchfork. Their relationship with the church was hand in glove: fake lepers would claim to have been cured by a certain statue or relic; donations from the devout would pour into the abbey; the monks would share the proceeds with the gueux.
I continue to be grateful to Keith Ivey for his generous gift!
The arrival at the Cour des Miracles (where the blind, diseased, and maimed beggars cast off their ailments) is, of course, one of the signature scenes of Notre Dame de Paris—so famous, apparently that it was even included in the Disney animated adaptation. Of the numerous film and television depictions (which, I must confess, rather run together in my mind), some seem to draw their depictions of the Cour des Miracles more or less directly from Dore’s famous engraving of the scene.
Lucy?!
Luc, Lucy — strange things happen in the Cour des Miracles.
Lucy?!
I was wondering if anyone would notice.
You can read her (well-written, needless to say) account of her transition here.
Of course I knew the phrase la Cour des Miracles, and I knew that if referred to a place likely to be full of beggars, but I did not know the reason for this name! Thank you Mr Hat and other well-read Hattics.
Thank you also for posting Luc(y)’s account, which is indeed extremely well-written as well as revealing of the author’s unusual life and personality, and also those of other persons in similar circumstances.
Lucy’s book the Other Paris receives at least one very deprecative review. Judging from the sample quoted by Mr Hat, as well as Lucy’s autobiographic article (I did not know her work or reputation), one wonders what type of reader could find so many flaws in the book.
Tout le monde a des ennemis.
They were ruled by an elected chief called the King of Thunes
In Kano, (in Robinson’s words) “the blind, lepers, beggars etc each have their king (sarki.)”
It used to be worthwhile, if you were robbed in a Hausa city, to visit the King of Thieves to redeem your property if it had particular sentimental value. However, I suspect that in these degenerate days there is too much Thief Republicanism about for this to work any longer.
It occurs to me that the trope of a “court” of beggars, thieves, or criminals is a pretty common one in fantasy, and even sometimes realist, media: Nadsokor, visited by Elric; the Thieves’ Guild in Lankhmar; the square where you get the quest to slay Humbaba in “Dragon Wars”; even the criminals’ tribunal in Fritz Lang’s film M. They are all different, but all clearly owe a debt to the fabled Cour des Miracles.
I certainly has the name “Court of Miracles,” and the associated suggestions of dissoluteness, in mind when I wrote this, about a “court of dreams”:
Miero
Since it sounds definitely Finnish, I’ve looked it up:
miero
Suomi
Substantiivi (Noun)
miero
(ylätyyliä) kodin ulkopuolinen maailma; kulkurina tai hylättynä kodittomana (kerjäläisenä) maailmalla olo
(literary style) the world outside one’s home; being a vagabond or abandoned homeless person (beggar) in the world
Ääntäminen (Pronunciation)
IPA: /ˈmie̯ro/
tavutus (syllabification): mie‧ro
Etymologia (Etymology)
Venäjän tai itäslaavin variantin maailmaa tarkoittavasta sanasta; venäjän мир (“mir”).
From a Russian or East Slavic variant of the word meaning world; Russian мир (“mir”).
Liittyvät sanat
Related words
mierolainen
vagrant, beggar
Idiomit
Idioms
joutua mieron tielle
go broke; пойти по миру (a collocation where the preposition is stressed)
Another case of ъ getting borrowed as /o/, I suppose.